


The Library

by merryghoul



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Child Abuse, Collars, Community: Reel Torchwood, Domestic Violence, Dream Sex, Dreams, F/F, Possession, Revenants, Vibrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:45:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/pseuds/merryghoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Tosh's devices is the key to completing Suzie's biography, but it's more than she bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Library

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you pollyglump again for the quick beta; all errors are my own and I'll be happy to correct them if needed--let me know.
> 
> Set after "They Keep Killing Suzie."
> 
> Fusion with _The Cell_ (the 2000 movie). Fandom tag removed 2/2/14.

Suzie Costello was dead. Again. And, much to Tosh's chagrin, she ended up doing the majority of the work needed to close Suzie's case.

Gwen was still recovering from Suzie "shooting" her in the head. She helped out the team whenever she could, but Owen advised her to rest as much as possible until she didn't have any constant headaches and the hole Suzie attempted to put in her head was healed. Ianto was sent to look for two other members of Pilgrim that had been programmed by Suzie to go on killing sprees; Jack joined him. (Suzie was the type to have a backup plan for her backup plan in case her first backup plan went wrong.) This left Tosh in charge of deprogramming Max Tresillian, the man who killed the Briscoes, in case he was still sensitive to the word "Torchwood," and write up Suzie's biography. Tosh was able to split deprogramming chores with Owen, but she couldn't get out of writing Suzie's biography.

"Toshiko," Jack said after he returned to the Hub, "have you begun working on Suzie's biography for our files?"

"I've tried, Jack. I've only been able to find out a few things about her." Tosh pulled up Suzie's incomplete biography on her computer. "In order, all I have on Suzie is she was our weapons expert and your second-in-command. You met her while she was working with a weapons manufacturer in Portsmouth and you, she, and Ben Barnes extracted an alien virus from her boss' body. Then I have the events of October 22, 2007 and the gunshot wound Suzie would eventually attempt to transfer to Gwen. Gwen witnessed Suzie pulling her father's life support at Greenleaves Hospital, so I added that. And she liked poetry, as we all know her Trojan horse was Dickinson's 'Because I could not stop for Death.' The end."

"You can't find anything about her age, her family other than her father, even her partner?"

"No, Jack. The only other things I can find are these photos."

Tosh pulled up a series of photos of Suzie from the Mainframe. One picture was of a young Suzie, snapped sometime in the 80s. The other pictures were of an adult Suzie. One picture had Suzie with closely cut curls on her head. Two pictures had Suzie with her curly hair down to the nape of her neck. Two were pictures recently snapped a few months before Suzie died, and the last picture was the picture of Suzie and her father found in her storage unit.

"What about that Neurological Mapmaker you were working on?"

"What about it?"

"You said that you could explore the mind of anyone living or dead with it. Maybe you could venture into Suzie's mind and fill in the gaps of her official biography."

"I don't know, Jack. The only person I've ever tried the Mapmaker on is Tommy. We agreed that I could use the device on him. And we all know Tommy isn't a sociopath."

Jack grabbed Tosh's hand and squeezed it. "You're afraid Suzie is going to kill you, isn't she?"

Tosh nodded.

"If we could save Gwen's life, we can make sure Suzie's not going to kill you while you use the Mapmaker on her. I'll have Owen and Gwen keep an eye on you in case something goes wrong. It'll be okay."

 

At the medical bay, Tosh was lying beside Suzie's corpse. Suzie was in the gown she first woke up in when she was resurrected with the resurrection glove. There were spots of blood on the gown. Most of the blood came from the bullet holes Jack put through her body. There were small spots of blood near Suzie's heart, from where Jack stabbed her. Suzie's heart had healed while she was using Gwen's life to heal herself, but not completely. There were scars on Suzie's right arm—the freshest scar was from the resurrection attempt, but there were others. They were faint, blending into her skin, but they were there.

"I never expected to see you again," Tosh said to Suzie's corpse. "And apparently you took some type of healing serum. What kind of a corpse is able to heal itself after being stabbed and shot at?"

Owen had just finished screwing on a metal headpiece on Suzie's head. He was now screwing on the headpiece on Tosh's head.

"Okay, Tosh. Suzie's brain is live. Or should I say _wired?_ Yeah, wired's a better word. We're going to put you to sleep. Once you're asleep, you should be inside Suzie's mind. We're going to monitor your vitals, and if they're not normal, we'll have to wake you up. If we can't…well, then, you're dead." Owen took a deep breath and frowned.

"Got it?"

Tosh nodded.

"Gwen?"

Gwen was at Tosh's station. "Yes, Owen?"

"Are you ready?"

"Yes, Owen."

"I'm putting Tosh under now."

Owen put a gas mask on Tosh's face. The mask was connected to nitrous oxide and oxygen tanks. Owen started pumping the gas.

Slowly, Tosh's mind went blank.

 

The first thing Tosh saw was a light. Tosh walked towards it.

At the end of the light was the entrance of a library. The library, built in the Georgian style, looked as it could fit in with the architecture of most of the city of Bath. Tosh walked up the stairs, opened the door and walked inside.

The door led into a dimly lit hallway. Large portraits adorned the walls. Tosh took a look at one of the portraits. She immediately realized the portrait was of John Tucker, the man Gwen observed when she first saw Torchwood. All the portraits were of Suzie's victims, from John Tucker to Suzie's father. There were even blank spaces for Jack and Gwen, the two people she had failed to kill when she was alive.

Tosh walked to Suzie's father's portrait. His name was covered with a piece of paper. Tosh pulled the paper; the plaque under the portrait read TARUN CHANDRASEKHAR. Tosh put the paper back over Suzie's father's name and walked down the hallway, which ended with a school of goldfish swimming around in a fish bowl.

Tosh walked into the library. The library was filled with shelves and shelves of books. There were several floors dedicated to the books in the library. Tosh wasn't sure where the highest floor in this library was. There were librarians on every floor of the library. All of them looked like Suzie. They all wore different colour blouses. Some of them wore pants, some of them wore skirts and some of them wore glasses. But they all had Suzie's long hair and boots.

Tosh looked at the spines of some of the books. Some of them were actual books, such as _The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson_ and an engineering textbook that was now out of print. Other books had titles such as _Human Animals_ and _The Cyberwoman in the Basement._ Gwen was too scared to pick up any of the books she found on the shelf. She kept walking further and further in the library.

Tosh walked towards a desk. There was a name plaque on the door: SUZANNE COSTELLO, REFERENCE. As soon as Tosh stood in front of the desk, Suzie (in her gray shirt with the embroidered flowers and black skirt, no glasses) turned around in her chair and stood up.

"I see you've stopped being so judgemental. 'Oh, I'm working in a job that has a bit less honour because of you.'" Suzie laughed and then sneered at Tosh.

"I'm only here because of my job, and my job involves finding out more about you."

"Torchwood barely knows who _you_ are, and they send you to figure out who I am."

"Yes, Suzie."

Suzie grinned. "Oh, I can do that. And I'll try to make your stay as pleasurable as possible." She walked in front of the desk. "Follow me, Toshiko. And beware of the glass vivisection panels."

"Glass vivisection panels?"

As soon as Suzie and Tosh were at a stairwell to the left of the reference desk, five glass panels fell from the roof of the library. They spread apart, then fell and shattered on the library floor. The shards disappeared within seconds.

"They were supposed to be for Gwen."

"You're sick, Suzie."

"You weren't saying that six months ago."

 

Before Suzie could open a door on the bottom floor of the library, a dove flew over Suzie's head and landed on her shoulder.

"Emily Dickinson liked to write poetry about birds in flight. It's a symbol of spirituality in her works."

"So now you've become the Messiah in your mind."

"No. This is your signal if you want out of my head. All you have to do is touch my shoulder. The bird will fly onto my shoulder. Touch the bird, and you'll wake up."

"I'm sure I won't need that bloody bird, Suzie."

"As you wish, Toshiko."

The dove flew away.

 

Suzie opened a door on the bottom floor of the library. The door led to a backyard. Tosh followed Suzie through the door.

Suzie grabbed Tosh's hand. Tosh took her hand out of Suzie's grasp.

"Have you ever been to Bath, Toshiko?"

"I used to live in Poole, when I was working for UNIT, but I never went to Bath. The only other place I lived was in London."

"Bath is where I was created. I wasn't meant to be created, and I'm quite surprised I was birthed, but here I am. Or was. I'm still dead. Your life is powering my dreams now."

Tosh nodded.

"I bet my father regretted impregnating my mother when he died." Suzie giggled. "It's where I was born. You can't see it from here, but I was born nearby, in the Royal United Hospital. And it's where I grew up, before I went to Oxford."

"There's no denying Bath is beautiful."

"It is. But there are uglier things hiding in the homes of Bath, like my childhood home."

In front of Tosh was a woman with long curly black hair. A little girl with tan skin sat in her lap. They both were wearing clothing from the early 1980s. Tosh realized the older woman was Suzie's mother and the girl in her lap was Suzie. Young Suzie was happy, something Tosh never sensed in the years she worked with her.

"You never told us you were mixed race, Suzie."

Suzie put her right arm around Tosh's shoulder. Tosh shrugged it off. "I thought it was obvious."

Suzie's mother was singing "Soley, Soley" by Middle of the Road, the same song Suzie was weeping to in Gwen's car.

"My mum gave me a love of poetry I never lost, not even after I died. She taught me to look for poetry in everything. And that's how I started off life—curious and willing to discover what's out there."

"Is it true everything dies, Mummy?" young Suzie asked.

Suzie's mother kissed her head. "Yes, Suzie. Everything dies."

"Are you going to die someday?"

"Yes, Suzie. And someday, you'll die too. Hopefully we'll be united in the afterlife, sweetie."

"I don't want to die. I want to live forever!"

"You can't live forever, Suzie. I'm sorry."

"This is the beginning of the end, Toshiko. This is when I became a monster, or so you'd like to tell me."

Suzie walked towards the back door of the home. Tosh followed her.

 

The door to the home led back into Suzie's library. Suzie and Tosh were now on the second floor of the library. Suzie stepped over what appeared to be a female body.

"Careful, Toshiko, that's my mum."

Tosh stepped over the female body before turning around and looking at it. Indeed, it was Suzie's mother, now lifeless.

"My father choked her to death. Can you see where she was strangled?"

Tosh nodded.

"My father said she was a worthless bitch. He always blamed her for getting pregnant, like he wasn't at fault. He always said I was an ugly child, not worthy of the Chandrasekhar name."

"Your real name is Suzie Chandrasekhar?"

" _Suzanne,_ with a zed. I shortened it to Suzie later. You'll see.

"My father was able to lie to the constabulary and say my mother hung herself. He never went to jail for her death. But it got much worse for me. Come on, we're going in here."

Suzie pulled a book, _The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson,_ off of a shelf. She opened another door. Tosh followed her.

"Young Suzanne will need this. It's very important."

Suzie and Tosh walked into another door in the library.

 

Suzie and Tosh arrived in the kitchen of Suzie's childhood home. Suzie grabbed Tosh's hand and the two of them ran into a cupboard with shuttered doors.

Suzanne was washing dishes in her kitchen. As she was putting a dish on a rack, the dish fell to the ground and shattered.

A voice was heard in the distance: "You worthless bitch. Did you drop another plate again?"

Tarun, Suzanne's father, barged into the kitchen. Unlike the last time Suzie and Gwen saw Tarun alive, Tarun had black curly hair instead of a large bald spot. He stood over Suzanne.

"I hate messes."

Suzanne started to back into a corner.

"You know what happens when you make messes, right?"

Tarun walked closer and closer to young Suzie. He took off his belt. As he was raising it over Suzanne's head, the scene faded from Suzie and Tosh's view.

"My father, if you could call him one, called me worthless and beat me—a lot. I'd go to school with bruises and black eyes—sometimes broken bones. I had to pretend I played a lot of cricket and climbed a lot of trees to escape the wrath of my father."

"You couldn't tell a teacher or a principal what you were going through?"

"My father was afraid of the cops. He had gotten away with murder, after all. The last thing he wanted was to lose control of me and rot in a jail while I was healing with people who would care for me. I think he would've been proud if he had taken me to my grave when I was young. But I survived."

Suzie and Tosh were in Suzanne's room. It was painted pink and decorated with children's toys—baby dolls, Barbies, talking dolls and plush animals. Some of the dolls and animals were headless.

"I started mutilating my toys. I'd pretend they were my father, and I'd imagine myself cutting his head off. I wanted him to pay for what he did to me."

Suzie walked up to Suzanne, handing her the Dickinson poetry. "That's where Emily Dickinson comes in. Her poems about death inspired me the most. That's when my mum's teachings finally sank in. Everything must die. But I didn't want to die. My father needed to die—it would be his punishment for killing my mother and beating me, telling me I was worthless."

Suzanne's room started to fade out.

Suzie laughed. "Scared yet?"

Tosh groaned. "No, Suzie. I feel bad that your father beat you and called you a 'worthless bitch,' but none of this is scary. It's sad."

"That just means I have to try harder.

"Eventually I did grow. I grew taller. I became smarter. I graduated school and went to Oxford to study engineering. I had dreams of working for a weapons manufacturer, and I did—for a while. But just before I started my job in Portsmouth, I almost killed my father. Did you know that?"

"That's why I'm here, Suzie."

"You never knew where my penchant for knives came from."

Suzie and Tosh were back in Suzanne's kitchen. Years had passed since Tosh viewed Suzanne washing dishes; it was now the mid-1990s. Tarun was sitting by a table in the kitchen, eating a frozen dinner.

Suzanne, now fully grown, walked in the kitchen. She slowly opened a drawer and pulled out a chef's knife. She walked behind her father and the knife.

"You see where I went wrong?" Suzie said to Tosh. "I didn't think this out."

Tarun stood up. Suzanne dropped the knife and left the kitchen. Tarun went to a phone and dialled 999.

"Hello? Yes. My daughter attempted to stab me in the back, literally. Her name is Suzanne Kalyani Chandrasekhar."

The scene in the kitchen faded back into what appeared to be a reading room in Suzie's library, complete with green leather chairs.

"Sit down, Toshiko. You need a rest after all this travelling."

Tosh sat down in one chair. Suzie sat in front of her.

"After you attempted to kill your father, that's when you changed your name to Suzie Costello."

Suzie nodded. "Shame. Kalyani is Sanskrit for 'beautiful,' did you know that? My mother actually gave me the name. We had a family friend named Kalyani. She bolted before my father killed her. That's why I had that middle name. My father approved of it—it made him look like _he_ gave me the middle name. That bastard only gave me my first last name. I bet he was pissed off when he found out I changed it to Costello. That's my mother's last name, before she got married to my father and became a Chandrasekhar. She's of Italian and Irish heritage.

"I adored the name. I loved my mum dearly, and adopting her last name as my new last name felt like a proper tribute. It was easy for me to forge a few documents to make it seem like I was born with the name, and people in Portsmouth weren't looking for a Suzanne Chandrasekhar."

"Don't let me forget to add 'she was fond of identity theft' in your biography."

"I'm dead. How can I remind you to do anything?"

"I assume I get to go out to Portsmouth and see you, Jack and Ben Barnes get the virus out of your boss soon."

"That was around the time my father got lung cancer. It's fitting, since the bastard liked to smoke around me. I'm amazed I didn't die of lung cancer myself. And then you'll see me use the members of Pilgrim to kill my father and prolong my life. But I think we should talk about us now. I really want to know why you were so judgemental. I mean, before I killed myself, we had a friendly rapport."

Tosh flung her head against the back of the chair and sighed. "Yes, we had sex, Suzie, after your affair with Owen didn't work out. You told me he was scum."

"He still is scum. He's fucking Gwen. And doesn't she have a boyfriend?"

"It didn't stop you from attempting to suck the life out of her."

"I wanted _your_ life, to be honest. But it makes sense that I was sucking the life out of Gwen. She's so damn gullible, always wanting to figure out _why_ people do things instead of letting things be."

"You wanted me to use the glove so you could take my life."

"I wanted you to be with me forever, Toshiko."

"I'm working hard to be free of UNIT forever, Suzie. I didn't join Torchwood so I could power your undead life. I'd like to leave Torchwood alive."

"With your precious Owen, who cares so much about you he's fucking another teammate of yours? I don't know when it's going to hit you, but working at Torchwood is a death sentence. All you're going to see is death. You're going to see innocents die. You're going to see your teammates die. You'll probably see Jack get sucked into the dark, which is where he belongs. Hell, you might even see yourself die. And you'll think you'll have died a noble death, but that's far from the truth. There is no dignity in working for a secretive organization that thinks they're saving Cardiff from the alien shit that floats down to earth. If there was any pride in this job, Torchwood wouldn't be a so-called secret organization. They'd be more out in the open, not Retconning everyone to oblivion and not having the loudest part of their organization be a SUV with TORCHWOOD plastered on the top of the roof. If you die, and there's a large chance you will, you'll have died for Jack's selfish purposes. Not because you were attempting to save Cardiff from alien shit, not because you were trying to return that Tommy bloke to 19-whatever to prevent some tear in time, but because Jack is a selfish bastard in the end. And the sad thing is that none of you will realize this until Jack outlives you all."

"Shut up, Suzie! Why would I even listen to someone who's hell bent on living forever she'd kill a few innocents herself and attempt to take the life of someone she claims 'replaced her?' You're just a walking pity party."

Suzie formed her hands into a circle. A leather collar formed around in her hands. Tosh tried to get up from the chair, but her body froze into place.

"I'm sorry. I forgot to tell you I own a few fetish tools. Cuffs, collars, paddles with the word "slut" on them—once applied to the body in my realm, they're a form of mind control. I knew you'd refuse to be a part of me. It's time that I jump at the possibility that you could be mine now."

Suzie put the collar around Tosh's neck.

"Forget our argument. Forget everything you've learned about me. I want you to stay in my bed. Forever."

 

Owen noticed something was wrong with Tosh when she was moaning beside Suzie's body. To see someone as quiet as Tosh moaning in a sexual manner while in an unconscious state was an amusing sight for him. He had to fight getting an erection while viewing Tosh.

He then noticed that, as Tosh was crying out for Suzie to put her fingers inside her, her heart rate was going down and her breathing was slowing. The combination of Tosh's lowered vitals and her pleading for Suzie to fuck her was enough to kill his erection for the moment.

"Shit. Gwen, are you seeing what I'm seeing? I think Suzie's trying to kill Tosh by fucking her, literally. Or she's simulating sex and Tosh thinks she _is_ having sex, or...oh, I won't get this."

"You're right, Owen. Tosh's vitals are going down."

"Is Jack or Ianto around?"

"No. They're still looking for a person Suzie brainwashed in Neath."

 _"Neath?_ There's a town called Neath?"

"It's east of Swansea."

"Fuck. Gwen, I need you to come down to the medical bay. Tosh made another mapmaker device in case something like this happened. You need to get Tosh away from Suzie's influence. I mean, it's bad enough she's actually begging Suzie to fuck her and we can hear it."

 

Owen explained, to the best of his ability, how the mapmaker worked to Gwen.

"Please remember this isn't real, okay?" he said. "I don't want to lose you to Suzie again."

"It's not real. I got it, Owen."

He then fit the device over Gwen's head and put her under.

 

Unlike Tosh, who ended up in the front of Suzie's library of the mind, Gwen ended up in the back. Gwen didn't realize it, but three versions of Suzie's mother stood at the back entrance of the library, ten yards before the start of the back stairs. All three of Suzie's mothers looked like stereotypical green zombies with long, curly black hair.

"Where's Suzie?" the first of the zombie mothers said to Gwen.

"Her father choked me and took me away from her. I miss her so," the second zombie mother said.

"She's become a monster now. We need to save her!" the third zombie mother said.

Gwen pushed the three zombie mothers out of the path. "I'm sorry, but I don't have time for zombies that aren't even going to eat my brain."

 

After walking through areas used to shelve books in the library, Gwen found herself in a bedroom. On the bed, alone, was Tosh. Gwen never imagined that she'd see Tosh, of all people, naked on a bed. The only other thing Tosh was wearing was the collar Suzie put around her neck. Tosh was writhing on the bed. Gwen could smell that she had just had sex.

Gwen shook her head. "This isn't real. Tosh thinks she's had sex with Suzie, but it isn't real. She's having a very fatal sex dream. I can't believe I said that."

Gwen walked to the bed. She hesitated before attempting to touch Tosh, but after remembering she snogged a woman possessed by an alien as well as Tosh's affair with the alien known as Mary, touching a nude Tosh would be the least of her worries. And if Rhys ever asked, Gwen could say it was part of her job busting a sex ring or something of the sort.

Gwen shook Tosh. "Tosh? Tosh, wake up. This isn't real. Wake up. Tosh, please wake up."

Gwen found herself cuffed to a wall across from Tosh in Suzie's bed. She was naked.

Suzie appeared in front of Gwen. She was wearing a black bathrobe.

"Hello, Gwen. I didn't think I'd see you again. I'm out of the violent death business now, if you can't tell already." Suzie began to stroke Gwen's sides. "I'm more into the little death business now."

Gwen found a wearable vibrator between her legs.

"It's okay, Gwen. You and Tosh and I can be here together forever. Torchwood can be a boy's club and Ianto may actually be useful, for once."

Suzie started the vibrator. Gwen found the experience pleasurable, but she focused less on the vibrator and more on Tosh.

"Tosh? Tosh? Oh, I wish we knew each other better."

"But you don't," Suzie said. "Isn't that a good thing? Just enjoy what I'm giving you: a slow, pleasurable death. If you're multi-orgasmic, of course, it may be even more pleasurable."

"You're Toshiko Sato. You're Torchwood Three's computer expert. You helped us find where the sex gas creature was located in Cardiff and you helped removed the alien from Carys Fletcher's body. You helped us find the Ghost Machine."

Suzie increased the vibrations on the vibrator. Gwen began to moan.

"Wake up, Tosh! I think that collar around your neck is controlling you. Take it off, please. We can't die because a dead person is sucking the lives out of us. None of this is real. Help yourself, Tosh. Help _me._ "

Tosh blinked. She took the collar off her neck. The clothes she wore in the Hub reappeared on her body. Tosh walked behind Suzie and put the collar around her neck. Suzie collapsed and fell to the ground.

Tosh freed Gwen from her restraints. The vibrator disappeared and Gwen's clothes reappeared. Gwen grabbed Tosh's hand. Gwen started running for the back entrance of Suzie's library, but Tosh stopped her.

"I'm not done yet, Gwen."

"Suzie almost tried to kill you!"

"I know. But Jack sent me inside to complete Suzie's biography. I'm about to finish the last chapter. Grab Suzie's right shoulder."

Gwen stooped down over Suzie's body and touched Suzie's shoulder.

"A dove is going to come to Suzie's shoulder. Touch it and you'll awake."

The dove began to fly down where Suzie was.

"Tosh, are you going to be okay?"

Tosh nodded.

"Did you have a relationship with Suzie?" Gwen lowered her voice.

Tosh nodded.

"I won't tell anyone. You didn't know she would be like this."

Gwen touched the dove and woke up.

 

Gwen gasped. Owen took the gas mask off of Gwen's face.

"Are Tosh's vitals up?"

"They are now. What happened to her?"

"Suzie made Tosh her sex slave. Let's leave it at that, okay? And you are _not_ invited."

Owen groaned.

"Tosh decided to stay behind. She has one more thing she needs to do before she wakes up. She didn't tell me what it was, but I trust her to do it without dying."

"Yeah, let's hope she can do it. Otherwise, I'll have to put you under again."

 

Tosh walked back into the main library. There was an open space that seemed like it was filling up the room with sunlight. A dark cloud emerged from the middle of the room. Suzie, back in her trench coat and skirt, appeared in front of Tosh.

"I'm not going to give you any more trips through my life, Toshiko. You've got the gist of it--bastard father, murdered mother, dreams of killing the bastard, access through Torchwood to kill the bastard and prolong my life, or so I thought. You want more?" Suzie threw her hand in the air. Tosh caught a book that read _The Life of Suzanne Costello_ in her hands. "Here's the rest of it. From my birth until my death, with every sordid detail in between. Collector's item. Torchwood'll love it. But you have to get past me first. If you win, you'll wake up. But if I win, we'll be in the Vault together, side by side, as I intend this to be."

"I can do whatever I want in this dream realm, correct?"

"What are you getting at, Toshiko?"

Tosh made a messenger bag appear at her side. She put _The Life of Suzanne Costello_ in the messenger bag and pulled out a HiCapa. She fired the HiCapa at Suzie, aiming at Suzie's head, and heard Suzie fell to the ground, bleeding a black substance from the wounds Tosh made in her head.

"This felt way too easy. But I guess I should go, Suzie. I don't want to become a causality like you already are."

As the library began to crumble, causing the stairways and books to hurdle to the ground, Tosh floated towards the light in the library.

She woke up in the Hub. Her eyes turned to Suzie. She was still dead.

 

 

SUZIE'S LIFE STORY (FINAL)

A report by Toshiko Sato

 **Full Name:** Suzie Costello (born Suzanne Kalyani Chandrasekhar).

 **Age:** She was 32 years old when she died. She was born on 14 May 1976 in Bath, Somerset (died 22 October 2007, in Cardiff). I did have drinks with her at a bar once during her birthday, but she never told me how old she was when she was alive.

 **Partner:** She had quite a few lovers at her alma mater, Oxford University, both men and women, as well as a few in Portsmouth and in Cardiff. Owen and I were her lovers at Torchwood. She never had a long-time partner, but she seemed to prefer me more than any of her other lovers. From going through her memories, I don't think she was attracted to other people in the gender binary. (And she definitely wasn't attracted to you, Jack. Sorry.)

 **Family:** Mother's name was Filippa Chandrasekhar _nee_ Costello, born 28 January 1951 in Leicester, Leicestershire. According to Suzie, she's of Italian and Irish decent despite having been born in England. Died 23 March 1983 at the hands of husband (and Suzie's father) Tarun Chandrasekhar (born 8 January 1949 in Chichester, West Sussex, died 3 December 2007 at Greenleaves Hospital, Wales). Chandrasekhar was never arrested for the murder or the abuse he dealt Suzie. Suzie was an only child.

 **Torchwood:** Joined in 2003, after being recruited by Jack and deceased operative (that you never told us about, Jack) Ben Barnes, in Portsmouth while working for a weapons manufacturer. After Barnes' death, Jack and Suzie were Torchwood Three for some time before they hired me in 2005 (and Owen, Ianto and Gwen soon thereafter). As I wrote in my notes earlier, I don't know why you're surprised that she betrayed you, Jack. You didn't even bother to know her. No, asking whether she wanted kids or not over beer and water _doesn't_ count. But she was good—no, excellent at her job.

 **Friends:** She tended to keep others away from her, and for good reason: so she could come up with the most convoluted plans known to humankind to extend her life and kill her father. Torchwood aided her in that, and her father contracting lung cancer forced her to stall and alter her plans so she could kill him. She had her father moved from a hospital in the West Country to Wales to make it easier for her to kill him when the time was right. As soon as her father knew she moved him to Wales, he knew his end was near, and Suzie was ecstatic.

 **Misc:** Suzie was fond of poetry, especially the song "Soley Soley" by Middle of the Road and Emily Dickinson. "Soley Soley" was a song Suzie's mother liked to sing to her, as I witnessed going through Suzie's memories. Gwen also stated Suzie said this in her car as she was driving to Greenleaves Hospital under manipulation from Suzie. As a child, Suzie was fond of Dickinson's poetry, especially Dickinson's death poetry. She used to fantasize about killing her father while reading Dickinson's poetry. Those goldfish she killed in the name of the glove and those people she killed? I guess it was practicing for the main event, delighting in the death of her father. She just couldn't wait, could she? She had to prove that she was this big bad murderer. Guess what, Suzie? You succeeded.

It made sense that she would use Dickinson's poetry in her plans to kill one of us (Gwen) and her father and trapping the rest of us in the Hub. She used Dickinson's voice as a display of the power she thought she wielded as some sort of death goddess.

But in the end, she believed she was lonely ever since her mother died. She died (several times) feeling like she was lonely and worthless. Her father put that belief in her and she never believed this wasn't true. Torchwood may have driven her mad, or so she says, but her father had a hand in her "madness." She could've asked for help, but she didn't. She killed goldfish and people instead.

Suzie Costello betrayed us. And now she is dead for good. This time she'll really stay that way.

 

 

The report done, Tosh went home after Ianto and Jack found Suzie's last failsafe victim in Neath. There were no signs of the paranormal threatening Cardiff, so Tosh could relax and not be enraged at what she wrote in Suzie's official biography. She took a shower, played some jazz, read _A Tale of Two Cities_ with the reader she swiped from the Archives, and went to bed.

Tosh dreamed she was in Suzie's bed from Suzie's library. She gasped. She was naked. To her left was Suzie. Suzie was shifting in bed, a smile on her face.

"You thought you got rid of me earlier." Suzie laughed. "No. I decided I wanted to live with you until you die. I'm now a part of _you._ Isn't that exciting?"

"No, Suzie, this is _not_ exciting."

"The best thing about this is you can't judge me anymore. You'll have to judge yourself." Suzie rolled over onto Tosh's body. "Looks like you'll be judging yourself right this moment. I can smell you, Tosh. And you smell _good._ "

Tosh sighed. "Where are you going to go when I die?"

"Oh, I have another failsafe in case I get resurrected again. And if that doesn't work, I'm going to live with Gwen. And if Gwen has children, I'll get to live with them until her lineage ends. I'm going to live _forever,_ Tosh, and no one can stop me. But I can smell you, Tosh. You may as well give into me. If Gwen can lie about sleeping with Owen, you can lie about sleeping with me in your dreams. And Tommy's still frozen, so there's that." Suzie giggled. "So?"

Tosh kissed Suzie. "I'll try to be less judgmental, Suzie. For you."

"Good."

Tosh let Suzie kiss her neck. Tosh was wrong after all—Suzie was determined to live forever, and no one could stop her. Not even Torchwood.


End file.
